Toshio Asaeda was a Japanese-born artist who spent the majority of his career in California. He studied with Hans Hofman in the early 1930's at the University of California Berkeley. A gifted draftsman, Asaeda worked as a documentary illustrator of marine and wildlife and later as an artist and assistant curator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In the early 1930's Asaeda accompanied an expedition to the South Pacific on the yacht Zaca, where he documented fish species observed there. In 1942, Asaeda's career was interrupted by the United States government policy of forced relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps throughout the western United States. Asaeda and his wife were sent to the internment camp at Topaz, Utah, in western Juab County. When the camp closed in 1945, the artist returned to California and continued his career as an artist and curator at California Institute of Technology.